


you're my horizon

by inkwelled



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Cloud Watching, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Falling In Love, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Relationship(s), Snippets, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 08:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkwelled/pseuds/inkwelled
Summary: She falls slowly, like the sun rising, like water boiling and snow melting.





	you're my horizon

**Author's Note:**

> rayla: says claudia's name in the s2 trailer  
> me, hopping back on my enemies to lovers bullshit at the speed of light: RAYDIA??? DID SOMEONE SAY RAYDIA?? WOW WE LOVE A CANON COUPLE

Rayla has always loved sunrises.

It's been a tradition, as long as she can remember, to wake before the sky did, to shake Runaan from his bed. To perch herself on his shoulder as they made their way away from the city to climb the hill on the far side.

Rayla has always loved colors. Nothing is more fascinating, even all these years later, than the way the sun wakes. It's a slow process.

"It's something more than magic, Rayla, something we aren't meant to understand or reason with," Runaan said once when she asked him, enthralled with the way the sun slept and rose each cycle. He had twirled a blade of grass between his fingers, wet with condensation. "Art."

She can't help but agree. For all his exterior, Runaan is the only thing she has close to a father and the simple knowledge that he wakes, every cycle, to pull himself from bed and the arms of his lover, to watch sunrises with her? To point out the clouds, to wear the flower crowns she used to love to weave together when she was younger.

It makes it all the more devastating when that blood arrow streaks across the sky, killing the sun. When Runaan doesn't follow, when the camp they once pitched is empty and abandoned.

It does more than kill the sun.

She doesn't watch the sunrises after that.

Rayla has a new mission, after all. Every day they go further into the woods, almost tracing the route she had taken to get to Katolis. Instead, now, they're heading back to Xadia.

Without Runaan.

She can't think of what Tinker will think when they arrive home, her hand purple and Runaan gone. Rayla doesn't know him dead or alive.

It's worse, not knowing.

Then the egg hatches and purple lightning strikes down around them on the mountain. Then two more enter the mix, and Rayla pulls her dual blades against the throat of a girl with black-tinted eyes and the darkest aura she's ever sensed.

Prejudices are more than one-way.

Rayla finds herself loving the sunsets, now. She had always hated them before - it signaled the end of a cycle, one where she was once against alone in her bunk.

Now, it means Claudia stokes the fire with a large branch and they take turns on watch. Rayla sits back against a large tree root, turns her face to the sky, and thinks of the way Claudia's hair rivals even the sunset.

One day, she will love sunrises again. But for now, Rayla watches the sunsets.


End file.
